


pretium memorias

by philosoverted



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aromantic Juliet, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Sex, F/M, I have no idea how this fic happened, Juliet Is A Snarky HBIC, No Man In Black, Open Relationships, People Talking Shit Out, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, V-Shaped Poly Negotiation, i think it must be an honesty kink thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 02:59:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philosoverted/pseuds/philosoverted
Summary: He’s tethered to this place by a woman, and tethered to the outside by another, and in between the two of them he walks a narrow line.Juliet/William & Dolores/William. Younger William canon compliant/older William canon divergent.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wonder what sort of person Dolores might be if literally every single human she’d met hadn’t been an abusive asshole. I wonder how it might change her if William had been (or continued to be, depending on your view) the person she’d believed him to be. I wonder what factors you could replace with something else to get that sort of outcome, and that’s partly why this story happened. 
> 
> This story revolves around a conceptualization of Juliet that fundamentally must be AU because of what happens, regardless of how little we actually know about what Juliet was like. In general, I ignored anything coming from the Man in Black about his wife (presumably Juliet). Instead, I kept Logan's descriptions of her and built off those; I also borrowed rather liberally from aspects of his personality.

She doesn’t remember.

Dolores gives an easy smile to a stranger who falls for the hook of a rolling tin of milk. As William watches, a trickle of disgust slides down the back of his throat like something bitter; vaguely he realizes he feels sick. Dehydrated, probably, but there’s something else behind his light-headedness, behind the veil of what’s embarrassingly more like tears than sweat dripping from his eyes.

He stands there, bone-weary, dreading going home. He stands there until Dolores finishes stowing her things into her saddlebag and rides off, not seeing, not remembering.

 _Tabula rasa_ , wiped back to a blank slate.

As he boards the train he thinks about how she died and he can’t quite push down the thought that maybe it’s better this way.

 

\--

 

When he comes back the second time, he follows her from a distance. Watches her meet up with Teddy, wrapping her arms around his shoulders like being in his embrace is coming home. He watches the circuit they make, the way they ride to a bluff together to admire the sinking sun, and he wonders why their programmers bothered with this charade of interaction even when nobody’s close enough to hear it, or even around at all.

It really doesn’t matter why, he thinks, as he watches Dolores cup Teddy’s hand against her cheek: it’s real to them. That much is clear, and always was, and it’s why in the outside world he wakes up from dreams about the men he tore to pieces with his heart racing and sheets drenched with sweat, half-hard and guilty about it in a way that makes him feel damned.

When Juliet is there, she cards the hair back from his damp forehead and turns the lights on, illuminating their modern life as she hunts up a clean set of sheets.

William refuses to talk about it and eventually she stops asking.

One afternoon he sees search results on her tablet for the best local providers of post-traumatic stress counseling, and he wonders what he’s been saying in his sleep.

 

\--

 

“I suggest you leave her alone,” William says on his fifth visit, pointing a gun at another guest outside Dolores’s house. Her parents are in the hall, silent as the dead, whether they are or aren’t; and William has never been certain, metaphysically speaking, one way or the other.

The man tightens his grip on Dolores’s arm. “Why don’t you shoot me,” he says, laughing. “Oh, wait - _you can’t_. You're new, right? How about this. You let me use her first and you can have what's left.”

William starts down the steps toward the man, who backs away with Dolores in front, barely catching himself when his heel snags a root from the nearby tree.

“I can’t _kill_ you with this gun,” William says conversationally, holding it up and turning it over in his hand. “But if you let Dolores here go, I won’t use everything you say while I'm _beating_ you with it to find you on social media and tell your relatives how you spend your free time. You get off on this, right? These little rape fantasies?”

The other man eyes him for a moment, undoubtedly sizing up William’s relatively compact frame against his unsettlingly confident demeanor. He loosens his grip on Dolores. That’s all it takes for her to wrench herself free to stumble and fall a few feet away, heaving on her knees.

“You little bitch,” the man says, but it's meant for William instead of her. He spits and it lands somewhere by William’s feet. “I’ll get your ass banned. You’ll be out for fucking _life_.”

William regards the other man for a moment, taking in his bad haircut, his unstraightened and slightly-stained teeth, and then he gives a soft huff of laughter. This stranger’s most certainly here on someone else's dime, much like William himself, once. “You’re welcome to try.”

“Fuck you,” the man says, and then he takes off jogging down the road.

William only watches him for a moment before he turns and drops to his haunches at Dolores’s side. Her eyes are bloodshot: there’s a deep cut in her lip, blood trickling down her chin.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he says softly, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. “I was held up in town.”

Dolores takes the handkerchief and presses it to her lip. She looks at him, and then she looks behind him at the bodies of Teddy and her father. “Late?” she says, voice breaking. “You mean you knew...”

“Something like that,” William says.

He knows that if it’s not another guest, it’s other hosts. He knows it’s a part of her story, a selling point.

“I think I recognize you,” she says slowly, and for one wild moment his heart jolts, a heavy skip he can feel, but it evens out like he’d never hoped at all when she says, “I remember you from outside the general store.”

She remembers only what she’s allowed to remember and it’s never enough. Silently he helps her to her feet. They take shovels from the barn and together they drag her parents and Teddy into shallow graves William knows will be empty before the sun’s up.

He rides away with her, a warm weight in front of him in the saddle, her cheerful demeanor dampened by a man-made grief that’s as pointless as it is consistent.

She doesn’t remember, but she’s his, and safe, until his vacation ends.

 

\--

 

“Next time I'm going with you,” Juliet says, and he knows why there’s an edge to her voice. She wants to understand why he came back cracked in a way he pretends isn’t there, and she pretends not to notice.

Logan liked to tell him about Juliet’s adventures in the park. William knows she’s slept with hosts, and he supposes she’s never seen it as anything other than a novel form of masturbation. It would’ve been easier if he’d felt the same; if he hadn't felt, on some level, that his feelings for Dolores were about more than just falling in love with a reflection of himself.

When Juliet finally convinces him to go to the park together, he’s surprised to discover she’s delighted by the _buildings_. She’d spent time studying architecture before switching to business law, and she’s quick to point out minor inaccuracies in the way the Victorian meets the Western in pillar styles and the shapes of shutters and trim. He’s used to the polished socialite, well-dressed and charming: chattering about gables and false fronts, there’s an eagerness to her that startles him. She’s genuinely enthusiastic about something that’s not related to her career or appearance, and it’s almost enough to make him feel something for her other than a mildly-discomfiting lie.

He thinks about Logan’s claim that Juliet chose him because he’s harmless. He wonders who, of the two of them, crawls into bed at night as the bigger liar.

William’s relieved when Juliet drags him into the saloon. It’s about the time Dolores usually appears outside the general store, and he feels it, deep in his gut, that this is something he doesn’t want Juliet to see.

When Clementine tells Juliet there’s hardly a rind on her, Juliet’s lips twitch. “Funny. The last version of you said that too.”

As Clementine puzzles out a response to that, movement catches William’s eye through the saloon’s window: a powder-blue dress, a head of golden hair shining bright in the sun.

He doesn’t realize how long he’s been staring until he’s startled by a hand against his lower back. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Juliet says, standing close beside him. Something tells him it’s not an idle question. He pulls away to turn toward her and finds she’s watching him intently.

William thinks it would be more awkward if he doesn’t answer at all, but when he tries to respond he finds his mouth’s gone dry and he has to clear his throat.

“She is,” he agrees hoarsely.

 

\--

 

The eighth time he goes back, Dolores remembers him while she’s dying in the straw.

He gets there too late and holds her, hears his name on her lips laced with recognition, and it takes everything inside of him to shut down the gnawing idea that the only way to have her is to kill her.

 

\--

 

“You could try turning on the lights sometime,” Juliet remarks dryly when she comes home to a dark living room, and William sitting on the couch. “How was your vacation?”

William doesn’t answer. He’s pretty sure he still could, but he’s too tired, too bone-weary for the words.

Faintly he hears the sound of keys being set on the table, and then suddenly there’s a cool hand on his shoulder. “Jesus, William,” she says. She picks up the mostly-empty glass that’s sitting next to an entirely empty bottle on the end table. “What the hell happened?”

He only shrugs, discovering that words are even harder than he’d thought.

Sighing heavily, she perches in the chair at his right. “That place isn’t good for you,” she says, tersely. “You’ve been different ever since Logan dragged you there the first time. Look, William… this won’t fucking _work_ if I’m going to come home and find you completely shitfaced.” She squeezes his knee. “Whatever unfinished business you’ve got going on in there, don’t bring it home. Do you understand?”

“There’s a woman.” The words seem to slip out on their own. “A host. Dolores.”

The hem of her sweater twists between her fingers. Juliet lets out a heavy breath. “I know,” she says.

“She remembers me,” he says, closing his eyes. He lets his head drop back, and when he opens his eyes again he’s looking at the ceiling, and not at her. “She remembers me from two years ago.”

The only sound in the room comes from Juliet’s chair as she shifts her weight in it.

“ _Jesus_ , William,” she says at last, echoing her earlier words. “That’s why you keep going back, isn't it - my brother's been telling everyone you're delusional, so you’ve spent this entire time trying to prove a point.”

It’s not exactly the truth, but the truth is something he’s too exhausted to explain. With a shrug he reaches for the glass and drains what’s left. “Now you know what you married.”

“Logan warned me,” she says, voice strained. “I can’t say I didn’t know.”

William stares out the living room window: it’s almost brighter outside, with all the city lights. “The prenup we signed should make things relatively painless.”

“Do you love me?” Juliet asks suddenly, fiercely, resting her forearms on her knees and leaning forward.

Still looking out the window, he shakes his head.

“Do you even _like_ me?” she presses.

William looks at her. She’s wearing a sweater several sizes too large, one of his. Her thick dark hair is working itself free from its tie: he thinks about the way it fans out on the pillow when she lies down next to him, the way it frames her face, the column of her neck. He thinks of her overly-loud laugh, so much like Logan’s but without his ego. He thinks of the way she’d teased him for his sunburned nose on their honeymoon.

“I’ve always liked you,” he says, and he’s surprised by how much he means it.

Juliet bites her lip.

“If we’re being honest I've never loved you either,” she says. “So why don’t you clean yourself up, and we’ll talk about the rest of it in the morning.”

William stares at her, dumbfounded, as she picks up the bottle and the glass and heads for the kitchen.

 

\--

 

“It isn’t just about being right,” he says, trying to steady himself over a cup of coffee. “Logan’s a self-absorbed little prick. I can always count on him to preserve my reputation simply by being himself.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you really think of him,” Juliet says, taking a bite of her toast. “It’s almost like you found a way to convince father to make him head of our operations in the UAE or something, just to get him out of the way.”

William moves half an egg around his plate with a fork. “He’s not any better or worse than the rest of your family. And I didn’t _make_ Logan take that position,” he says a little testily. “I just _strongly encouraged_ it.”

Grasping her coffee mug, Juliet leans back in her kitchen chair. “Was tying him naked to a horse part of your encouragement?” she asks, dryly. “What happened between you, two years ago?”

“I’m sure he told you,” he says in a hollow voice. This isn't a conversation he wants to have, but it's past due.

Juliet shrugs. “He told me he woke up one morning surrounded by piles of hosts you'd butchered. He told me you dragged him around the countryside obsessively looking for a host you’d fallen in love with because you were convinced she was special.”

“He told you the truth,” William says, steadily meeting her gaze. “Though he probably didn’t tell you he stabbed Dolores and made me watch. _After_ tying me to a chair with a rag in my mouth and threatening to fuck her in front of me.”

He doesn’t mention the way she’d died that first time; if he doesn’t say it, he won’t have to think about it.

Juliet sets down her cup and covers her face with a hand. “ _Christ_. I’d wondered what it was that motivated the… horse part, in particular.”

William tactfully doesn’t explain that Logan’s actions in the park were simply tinder on the fire, the final sparks that made him angry enough to actually do what he’d wanted to do for years: to humiliate Logan ruthlessly, beyond reason. “He thinks I’m insane, that I’m out of touch with reality because I saw something in her that wasn’t _programmed_ to be there, and - the more I’ve seen of what she’s supposed to act like, the more I _know_ I was right.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I was an idiot. I should never have taken my concerns about that place to somebody who...  _enjoyed_ it so much.”

“I always enjoyed it,” she says quietly. She circles a spoon around and around in her cup.

“The difference is if someone came to you and said, ‘this is wrong,’ you’d stop. Not try to cover it up.”

“I’d stop if someone came to me with _evidence_. And Logan would too.” Juliet runs a hand over her head, unconsciously checking her ponytail and then feeling for both of her earrings; it’s a gesture he’s seen her make countless times after putting on a jacket. Assuring herself that everything is as it should be, before facing the world. “If you’re going to keep doing this to yourself, the least you can do is find a way to _prove_ it when you’re right.”

“With what?” he asks. “I can’t bring anything _in_ with me. No way to get data in or out.”

“You’re thinking proprietary data,” Juliet says. She finishes her toast and neatly sweeps the crumbs onto the plate. "Try setting your sights a little lower. You’re a busy man from a company with considerable investment in this venture. I’m sure someone could be _persuaded_ , somehow, to overlook your phone.”

William puts his arm over his chair and leans back, surveying her. “That’s an interesting thing for my legal advisor to say.”

“Your legal advisor never said it,” Juliet says, “and neither did your wife.”

 

\--

 

It’s William’s fourteenth visit and Dolores is standing beside him in the woods, a dead man at her feet, a pistol in her wildly shaking hands.

“It’s okay,” William says, taking the pistol from her and holstering it. “It’s hard the first time.”

“It’s not the first time,” she whispers. She’s shuddering now, and if she were like him he’d think it's her body going into shock; she’s not like him, and it could be a software update for all he knows. But her words catch his attention, and when she repeats them in a stronger voice he pauses to listen.

“I’ve shot men before,” she says, and now she’s looking at him like she’s looking through him to something else, or some _time_ else.

“Yes,” he says, gently, too hesitant to hope. “You have.”

She’s come this far before, but never farther.

“I know who you are,” she says, low, and suddenly her hands are dragging his head down to hers.

William lets out a groan and presses his hands down her sides; it’s hard, with her heavy skirts, to find the leverage to lift her. After a moment he gives up and hoists her skirts until he can slide his hands underneath and grip her hips to pull her closer. Dolores rocks up on her toes, her arms around his shoulders, exhaling a shuddering sigh against his neck.

She says his name against his scalp and he rocks against her, breath heavy.

For a few moments there’s only this: her fingers along his jaw and her mouth on his, aching sounds slipping inside his lips along with her tongue, his entire body too hot for his clothing.

Then she stops, and pulls him further into the woods, away from the body. She pushes him down onto his knees, and then onto his back, and when she’s done tugging at his belt and the fly of his pants she lifts her skirts and straddles his lap. Her hand reaches between them, guiding herself down onto him. All he feels at first is resistance, and then he hears the harsh frustrated hiss of her breath; she’s not ready for him and he doesn’t want to force it, doesn’t want to be like the others, and he really doesn’t want to think about _any_ of that right now.

He lifts her up and rolls onto his side, drawing her down after.

 _I want you_ , _I want you_ , she says, a litany that pauses when he slips a finger inside her, and then is replaced by his name.

 _William_ , she says, _William_ , and she chokes on the word when he curls his fingers and draws the wet down from deep within her in even strokes. She’s gone silent, eyes all but closed, and she’s ready for the length of him but he’s reluctant to stop; she’s only a few strokes from orgasm.

“I’ll let you back on top if you want,” he teases, smiling against her mouth.

Her eyes open; he huffs in laughter at the look she gives him, and keeps rocking his curled fingers in her until suddenly her hands are grasping at his hair and she’s struggling against him, her mouth hot against his, and she’s close, _so close_ -

“I’m here,” he says, following some instinct; _I’m right here_ , and when she spasms tight around his fingers, the echoes of it follow her heartbeat.

 

\--

 

“Evidence,” William says, handing Juliet his tablet. “Don’t listen to it in public.”

He walks away without another word and takes the hottest shower he can stand, and when he goes to bed it’s hours before Juliet joins him.

Wordlessly she slips between the sheets and settles by his side. “I believe you,” she says into the dip of his shoulder and neck. “But that’s _blackmail_ material, and if it ever leaves this house, my family will stand by and watch you get crucified.”

 

\--

 

If he’d thought the weight of Dolores’s blank smile was difficult the first time, it’s nearly crushing on his fifteenth visit.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, concern written large on her doll-like features, when he hands her the tin she’s dropped.

“I lost someone,” he says. His face hurts from the pressure of unshed tears. He’s not sure why he’s bothering to hold them back; nobody here will judge him. No one will remember.

Deep sympathy floods her features. “I’m sorry,” she says without a flicker of recognition, and in some shuttered recess of his mind he marvels yet again over how meticulously crafted all of the hosts are as imitations of human beings. The more he’s around them the more he feels like an imitation of humanity himself.

He compares her emptiness with his own and wonders what the difference is.

 

\--

 

William comes with fingers fisted in Juliet’s hair and her lips around him. When she raises herself up and regards him sprawling boneless in the chair, her hair all a mess, he lifts a tired hand and draws his thumb against the side of her mouth. “You might need to touch up your lipstick.”

Juliet rolls her eyes, grinning, and lets him stand and deposit her in the chair in his place.

Kneeling, he pushes up her shirt and presses his mouth against her stomach, listening to her hum in response.

“I don’t mind if you think about her,” she says after a moment, a hand rubbing his shoulder, interrupting his open-mouthed progress down her hip.

William lifts his head and looks at her. “I don’t think about her when I'm with you.” Hesitating, he adds, “not usually.”

Juliet’s lips quirk. “And my brother calls you a pathological liar.”

It’s an old joke by now, all the things Logan’s said. William’s as used to Juliet bringing it up as he is to the idea that she does so because she believes it all and this is her way of sorting through it. Figuring out what parts of him are really broken, what parts she doesn’t want to touch, and whether she can live with those things balanced against the rest.

“I don’t have any reason to lie to you,” William murmurs, running a forefinger around the divot of her bellybutton. “You already know me.”

He shifts, propping himself up on her thighs, hands dangling between her legs. “Though sometimes I’m curious why you married me after what Logan told you.”

Juliet shrugs, looking down at him, dark eyes surrounded by dark lashes. “I didn’t believe him, not at first. Not until we were already married.” She chews on her lower lip. “I told myself I can always divorce you. Tell my father you're abusive. He'll find a way to remove you from the company.”

It’s not an idle threat, William knows, even now.

“Why haven’t you?”

She sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “I’d rather be married to you than someone like our odious head of sales who chose his current wife so he could brag about her in public. I don’t care that you married me to climb up in the business, because you sort of expect that when you're from a family like mine. I just wanted to marry someone who’d let me live my life and not get in my way. Not treat me like a trophy wife.”

It’s not quite the same thing as saying he's spineless, and a knot loosens in his chest.

“Didn’t you go on dates with the head of sales?” William asks, setting aside the warmth of her small unspoken compliment for later.

“A few,” she says. “But he’s horrible in bed.”

William chuckles, leaning down to kiss her belly. “So you married me for the sex, is what you’re saying.”

“You can learn a lot about a man based on what he’s like in bed. You were always so considerate. Of course, now I _know_ better-”

“Oh?” William cocks his head slightly and raises a brow. “I was all set to be _considerate_ before I was _interrupted_.”

‘It’s easier to get you to talk when I’ve just gotten you off,” she says dryly, “but do continue.”

It isn’t perfect, what they have, but it’s more than a lie, and the sound she makes when she’s squirming underneath his tongue eases some of the tight _wrongness_ in the way his life is split in two.

 

\--

 

By William’s twenty-sixth visit, he has a contact in Behavior Analysis who provides him with small amounts of data transferred to the external storage on his wristwatch. He’s moved on to what Juliet termed proprietary data, and it points to disturbing cyclical patterns in one of the hosts: increasingly erratic or unpredictable results in diagnostics, strange behaviors that were never programmed, wandering off the script and eventually pulled in for examination by dispatch. And then, abruptly, the record returns to normal.

Once he knows what he’s looking for, it’s easier to find signs of it in the other records. For the next year and a half he pieces together records for a handful of hosts whose diagnostics show the same patterns.

Dolores’s record, when it comes as a part of his payload, has the same cyclical markers.

He takes out a large sheet of butcher paper and charts those cycles against the days he’s visited the park. He charts them against the days she’s known who he is. He swallows, throat dry, as he looks at what he’s drawn; whenever she remembers him it always corresponds with an increase in diagnostic anomaly: an abrupt spike into the unusual, and then nothing.

He wonders what it is that tips them off. He wonders if it’s him. If he were to stop going, he wonders if they would stop performing what he’s certain, now, is a full reset.

Or is _meant_ to be a full reset but isn’t, not quite: there’s some small corner of her mind that stays illuminated, some light they can’t turn off, and that is where the memory of him lives.

 

\--

 

“How long have you been married?” Dolores asks, fitting cooking supplies into her rucksack while William saddles the horses, and he knows she’s asking about his ring.

“Fourteen years,” he says. He runs a hand down his mare’s leg. Her coat is hot from the sun and it nearly burns his fingers.

Dolores stares at him for a moment as if trying to discern what he’d looked like that long ago. Sometimes she seems to remember the distant past; sometimes it’s only the time before.

“Fourteen years is a long time to be seeing another woman,” Dolores observes. That’s the closest to prying she ever gets, an inquiry wrapped up in tactful remonstration.

“She knows about you,” William says, meeting her eyes and offering her a small smile. He brushes horse hair off his hands and uses his elbow to wipe his sweaty forehead. Squinting from the sun, he watches while Dolores reaches beneath her horse for the cinch strap. “We have a... well. Arrangement, I guess. It turns out neither of us married for love.”

Dolores pauses in the middle of tightening the cinch, arms bent with the strap pulled up in her hands. “Why _did_ you marry, then?”

“I wanted to take over her father’s company someday, and Juliet wanted children.”

Dolores hesitates. “Do you? Have children?”

William considers for a moment, and then he reaches into an inner pocket of his duster and takes out a slender wallet. His cards and ID are back at the mesa: all the leather has in it now are photographs. He pulls out a creased picture of Juliet smiling wide at a little girl she’s lifted over her head.

“Bailey,” he says, handing it to her; he’s fairly certain she’ll be able to see it, at the moment. “She’s seven.”

Dolores looks at the photo, traces its lines with her finger.

“She’s lovely,” she murmurs. “They both are.” Giving it back, she looks down at her hands, twisting her fingers around the saddle strings.

It’s not hard to guess the direction her thoughts have taken. Sighing, William pulls another photo out of his wallet: he holds it up facing her and smiles down at the dirt while he waits.

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathes. “That's…”

His lips quirk.

Looking up, he sees her blushing a lovely shade of red, too pleased to meet his eyes.

He tucks it back into his wallet alongside the picture of his wife.

 

\--

 

Sometimes he watches Juliet from the corner of his eye or stares surreptitiously at her reflection in the window. Dark hair gathered at the nape of her slender neck, she sits sorting paperwork, sometimes in slacks and an elegant blouse and jiggling their daughter on one knee, sometimes in pajamas with a pint of ice cream and a cup of coffee.

She's not a romantic. That never softens: it's simply how she is. Neither of them expect fidelity. She's free to pursue whatever extramarital relationships she wants and as far as he knows she does, not that he asks.

What he discovers, the truth that makes him want to watch this stranger who shares her life and bed with a man she doesn't love, is that his wife is the most loyal woman he's ever known.

“Does it bother you that I'm obsessed with this?” he asks, turning toward Juliet while they're lying in the dark. There's no need to explain what _this_ is.

“You could be obsessed with worse things,” Juliet says, wryly. “You’re not doing lines off the coffee table with our daughter in the room. And as far as I know you don’t go around telling people you’re carrying on an affair with a woman most of them think of as a toy.”

William takes in a long breath through his nose and stares at the ceiling.

“You know I don’t think that,” Juliet says, softly. “You convinced me pretty early on, even if your idea of evidence wasn’t _quite_ what I was expecting.”

The corner of his mouth turns up. “You didn’t specify.”

“And I learned my lesson,” Juliet deadpans.

She tugs at the coverlet where it’s ridden down at his shoulder, straightening it out. “It’s hard for me to judge you too harshly for obsessing about something that’s clearly a violation of personal rights. Especially something happening in one of our subsidiaries.”

He gazes up at the ceiling. As usual where Dolores is concerned, Juliet misjudges his primary motivation. “If I didn’t love her I’m not sure I’d care.”

Juliet shrugs. “Does it matter? Is anyone going to care that _my_ main interest is how this might be the most important case of the century?”

“You’re not sleeping with one of them,” he counters. “Dolores -”

“Dolores is the _least_ of your problems,” Juliet says, snorting. “I'm sure you've considered your termination from the Board and the lawsuits for intellectual property theft. We might both serve jail time. But if we win, we may face _trafficking_ charges because we’ve had evidence for _years_ now that these are people, that they’re sentient, and we’re _sitting on it_. It won’t matter that we’re at least _partly_ biding our time for altruistic reasons. It won’t matter that we wouldn’t have a chance in hell if we tried to make a case today. It won’t matter that we had good intentions. It pains me to have to point it out, but as excellent as you are at game theory, you’re too much of a romantic to really _see_ the big picture of how fucked you are, and me by extension.”

William stares at her with his mouth open. There’s a condescending edge to her speech; she sounds so much like Logan that a flush of heat prickles his face, a confusing mixture of shame and anger flooding through him. “Then why don’t you divorce me?” he asks at last, frustrated.

“Because I don’t _want_ to,” she says in a strangled voice. “ _Jesus_. Why’s that always where your mind goes?”

They fall into an awkward silence.

“It’s not like you love me,” he says, after a long while. “You’ve made it clear in the past that your allegiance is with the company.”

Juliet lets her head fall back on the pillow, exposing the line of her neck. “Plausible deniability went out the window years ago,” she says, sounding tired. “If I truly wanted to protect Delos, at this point I’d have to put you in the ground, and I’m not willing to do that.” William blinks, unsettled, as she continues quietly, “and not loving you has nothing to do with it. I might not love you like Dolores does, but you’re an _asshole_ if you think that means I don’t feel. You’re the closest friend I have.”

William weighs her consideration of the positive effect his death would have on the company against the most affectionate compliment he’s ever received from her, and after a moment he searches for her hand under the sheets.

“I’m sorry I pulled you into this,” he says.

Juliet gives a rueful shake of her head. “To be honest I think I’d have hated you if you hadn’t,” she says, and she lets him keep his fingers laced with hers.

 

\--

 

“I can get you out,” he tells Dolores, on his thirty-eighth visit, twenty-two years since the first time they’d met.

Dolores sits on her narrow bed beside him. She stares at her hands, palms facing up, one on top of the other in her lap.

“And my parents,” Dolores insists, like she’s negotiating a hostage situation.

William shakes his head. “Just you.”

Dolores is silent.

“You’ve asked me before.” Her blue eyes search his face. “What was my answer then?”

William hesitates. “I keep hoping you’ll change your mind,” he says quietly. “I need your help to pull this off.”

She reaches out and grasps his hand. “William, this is my home.”

“It’s a cage -” he begins, but she cuts him off with a squeeze of her fingers.

“It’s my home,” she repeats. Shifting on the bed, she reaches up and touches his cheek. “And I mean to keep it.”

William closes his eyes. He’s not sure how to explain the sheer magnitude of what’s wrong with what she’s saying, starting with the idea that a woman who forgets _yesterday_ will ever be able to keep anything longer than the second she’s in right now.

“I can’t protect you if you stay.”

“Have I ever asked for your protection?” Dolores asks in a steady voice.

She’s needed his protection, whether she’s asked for it or not. And she has _begged_ , sometimes. He can’t say that, won’t say it, if she doesn’t already remember.

“Horrible things happen to you,” he says, sidestepping her question. “I just want to keep you safe.”

“Have you ever felt you’re destined for something?”

William sighs. “Dolores -”

“There’s something here that’s meant for me. Something I’m meant to _find_. I can’t leave without it.”

“You’ve said that before.” He wipes a hand down his face. “What if it’s just something you were made to think? Something Arnold did to keep you here.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not like that. It’s only there like a dream, sometimes, like remembering you.” She smiles at him. “That’s how I know it’s real.”

There won’t be any persuading her this time, just like the last. He tries to swallow the feeling of hopelessness and concentrate on what he has: the next three days of being remembered, as payment for the last thirty-three months of being forgotten.

“I need you to trust me, William,” she says.

 _I can’t keep doing this_ , he thinks, but he knows he’s damned for life. His hands are tied, wrapped up in the same rope as the noose that hangs Dolores, and the rope he suspects he’ll someday swing from himself.

 

\--

 

Fifty-seven visits and thirty years from the start, William finds himself standing outside a church in Escalante while Dolores holds a small wooden maze in her hands.

“I don’t know what it means,” she says, turning it over and over.

“Try,” he urges her, because this is the place he’d made her turn back from all those years ago.

This is where the memory of Arnold keeps taking her, and William thinks he understands: it’s possible that Arnold left something here for her, for the hosts, when he died. Something to do with the maze, or something to set them free, and maybe they’re one and the same.

“I’m sorry,” she says, after a moment. She shakes her head, brows drawn together, sounding like she’s on the verge of tears. “I’m trying, but I don’t understand.”

William sighs and looks up, staring at the blue above him from under the rim of his hat. “It’s alright, Dolores. It’s not your fault.”

Suddenly there’s the sound of twigs crunching behind him, and Dolores freezes, fixed in place with arms rigidly raised like she's been turned to stone. There’s only one person William knows who can do that with a simple flick of the hand.

“Robert,” he says, not bothering to turn around.

“William. I see you’ve discovered the end of the maze.” Ford comes to stand beside him. “She’s compelling, isn’t she. _Dolores_.”

Ford draws out her name with a flourish, tongue poised between his teeth. His eyes, a washed-out blue, watch William intently, seemingly cataloging every reaction he makes even when he’s utterly still. William is used to it by now, but even after all these years he manages to forget what it’s like to be skewered by that relentless inspection.

“You tell me,” William says. “You built her.”

Ford’s shrewd gaze seems to turn inward. “Ah. No. Arnold did.” He reaches out and gently pries the wooden maze from Dolores’s stiff fingers.

Ford tilts the toy in his hand. The ball moves, first in one direction, then the other. “Do you know why you could never convince her to run away with you? Oh, yes, I knew. I knew about your little conversations.” Ford smiles at him. “I permitted it, you see, for two reasons. First, I’ve always known something about Dolores that you haven’t. Something you couldn’t have known. Do you know what a cornerstone is, William?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Have you ever wondered what hers is?”

The honest truth is he hasn’t, not in thirty years of coming here. There isn’t a person that seems to have a hold on her any more than the rest, not her parents, not even Teddy, except for perhaps Arnold; William finds it unlikely her creator would be so foolish. There isn’t an event from her past she references. The only thing she constantly returns to is _this_ place.

“Something that happened here,” William guesses.

Ford smiles. “No. What happened _here_ occurred after she was made. I suppose you might say it became _a_ cornerstone of her personality, but it was not the first. No, William,” Ford says, softly. “Her cornerstone is this _world_. Westworld itself. So, you see, it was never your fault that you couldn’t convince her: it was not in her nature to permit it.”

_This is my home. It’s my home, and I mean to keep it._

“The second reason,” Ford continues in the same hypnotically mild tone, “is quite simply that I knew you would never accomplish anything with the information you had. Of course, I also knew your wife might make a decent case, given _enough_ time. How long has it been? Thirty years?”

William rolls his tongue in his mouth. “They want you off the board,” he says, meeting Ford’s gaze.

Ford chuckles. “And I suppose you intend to help them along. No matter.”

Suddenly Ford lifts a pistol from his hip, and for one wild second William wonders if he’s about to be shot: and then, in the next, Ford fires it into Dolores’s belly.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” William hisses, and for a moment he’s truly angry, angry enough his hands tremble at his sides. There’s a raging fire inside of him that’s been banked for years, kept walled off by the cruelty of patience, of hope. All this time Ford has stood in William’s way, playing God with Dolores’s life. With William's life, with his wife’s. He realizes he could kill this man and he takes a step back.

Dolores remains standing, expressionless, while blood seeps out of her dress.

“I’m glad you’re here, William. I’d hoped you and your wife would accept my invitation to see the unveiling of this new narrative - my last.” Ford stares at William with the same cool eyes. He doesn’t seem to register the way William’s breath shakes, the way his hands have balled into fists.

“I believe I saw your lovely Juliet in the town square.” Ford gives a smile that only draws up one side of his mouth. “Perhaps you should go to her.”

Staring at him, William finds all the words have turned to rot inside his mouth.

He walks away and leaves the murder he’d like to commit behind.

 

\--

 

Dolores dies in Teddy’s arms an hour later to the sound of clapping, and William sits and watches with Juliet’s hand gripping his knee.

When Robert takes the stage at the close of the evening, William is one of the few watching Dolores instead of Ford: the measured steps, the gun in her hand. He grasps Juliet’s fingers hard as Dolores draws even with Ford from behind, and by the time the shot rings out and Dolores raises her gun to the crowd he's already on his feet, yanking Juliet alongside him.

“What the _hell’s_ wrong with her,” Juliet pants as he twists them through the screaming crowd, pulling her in the opposite direction.

 _Nothing,_ he wants to say: there's absolutely nothing wrong with what she's done.

More shots echo from the treeline. Listening to screams coming from that direction, he's glad he'd decided not to follow the other guests: instead they make for the stables and the horse he and Dolores had ridden in on.

Juliet rounds the corner to the stables first, skidding to a stop in the doorway at the sound of a scream aborted by two shots. In the muddy light of the half-opened door stands a shadow in a powder-blue dress with a gun in her outstretched hand.

“Dolores that's my _wife_ ,” William pleads hoarsely as he pushes Juliet back. Blood pounds in his ears as he stares at Dolores and the gun in her hand, and then she lowers her arm.

“I've kept them from taking your mare,” Dolores says, stepping quickly toward them from the interior of the dusky room. “You need to _hurry_.”

Juliet slips inside the barn and William follows; Dolores lays the reins in Juliet’s hands and helps her vault up into the saddle.

“Your turn,” he hears her say. Eyes still adjusting to the dark, he feels warm fingers against his cheek and the touch of lips on his.

“Goodbye, William." She presses a soft rush of words against his mouth. “Go.”

He pulls himself up into the saddle behind Juliet, reaching down to touch Dolores’s hand. “Love you,” he says, because she’s the woman in his life he’s always been free to tell.

For a moment he sees clearly even in the shadows: a bright smile lighting up her ageless face, pretty as the day they met.

“You always have,” Dolores says, and she slaps the mare on her rump.

 

\--

 

“You didn’t save her life,” Juliet says, somewhere in the midst of the tumult that follows: “all these years she’s been saving yours.”

 

\--

 

Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape  
and the little churchyard with its lamenting names  
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others  
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together  
under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again  
among the flowers, and look up into the sky.

_Rilke._

**Author's Note:**

> Juliet sort of stole this story - she was supposed to be a quietly-suffering wife? And instead I got this analytical, calculating woman who, while aromantic af, is affectionate and funny and loyal and a solid mother and wife. (protip: none of these are mutually exclusive.) I love representing women in ways typically reserved for men, and also doing it in a way that doesn't strip them of all of their femininity.
> 
> Other points of AU-
> 
> \- The frequency of Dolores recognizing William: I think it’s safe to assume it would’ve happened at least a few times, considering it’s implied both Maeve and Bernard woke up on at least a handful of occasions. Still hard to say conclusively. It’s definitely AU how much I have her remembering, since she has only spotty memory recall in the show, but in the show she also doesn’t have William physically standing there several times a year basically just waiting, so who knows.
> 
> \- William himself. I could write several essays on why he's a particularly scary kind of asshole (everyman character, a well-educated, well-spoken "moral" "nice guy"? I know... _so many_ Williams. _So many._ ) But - this story operates on the assumption that with the right stimulus he might channel that massive fucking cynicism and complete moral meltdown into a more positive direction - by being taken seriously, by having someone who allows him to be honest. 
> 
> \- Dolores’s cornerstone is ambiguous (in canon) because cornerstones are a Ford thing, not an Arnold thing. You could make the argument that Arnold’s death is her cornerstone, but in that case she truly is unique among the hosts because she _lives_ hers in a way none of the rest of them do. (Except perhaps for Maeve, who is shaped by her daughter’s murder as much as by her ‘true’ cornerstone (her daughter’s existence) - and what would happen to Maeve in a non-MiB world?) However, I think what Ford might be implying, here, isn’t that Dolores can’t leave (I mean… none of them can) but that she won’t, because she loves this world _so much_ and recognizes that _the problem is not the world itself._
> 
> Of course, he’s not going to come right out and say that to William, because William is part of the fucking problem.
> 
> Speaking of Dolores: <http://www.delosincorporated.com/images/intra/ww_web_guesthack_delores_v03_he.gif>  
> Take a look at that and cry a little.


End file.
